The Legacy of the Bush Administration on the Clean Water Act
“The Bush Administration has presided over the slow, but steady, dismantling of the Clean Water Act.”
DC: Clean Water Act status report released Content Works (October 17, 2008)
Oct 17, 2008 (Congressional Documents and Publications/ContentWorks via COMTEX) — On the eve of the 36th anniversary of the enactment of the Clean Water Act (October 18), Rep. James L. Oberstar, Chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, released a report on the status of the nation’s waters under the Bush Administration.
This landmark environmental statute, which established a national commitment to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters, has been undermined and weakened by the Bush administration, and many Federal clean water protections have been eliminated in the past eight years.
Among the findings of the report are:
- the Bush administration has walked away from the Federal commitment towards improving, repairing, and replacing the nation’s crumbling wastewater infrastructure;
- the Bush administration has ignored the growing scientific consensus on global warming, leaving Americans more vulnerable to droughts, coastal and river flooding, and other climate-related impacts;
- the Bush administration has embraced the misguided opinions of conservative Supreme Court justices on the protections of the Clean Water Act, and turned the nation’s “no net loss” policy into a “pro net loss” policy;
- the Bush administration has embraced the wishes of special-interest polluters, such as the oil and gas industry, chemical manufacturers, and large-scale factory farmers, in weakening Clean Water Act protections over the nation’s waters; and
- the Bush administration has proposed to relax decades-old Clean Water Act standards to prevent the discharge of raw or partially-treated sewage into the nation’s rivers and streams.
For more information about the report, please contact Committee Press Secretary Mary Kerr at 202-225-6260 or mary.kerr@mail.house.gov.
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